Goodbye
by Meixia
Summary: Ot's as inevitable as the sunrise. Clark and Lex have a falling out.


Cold and distanced is a look that Clark never wants to see on Lex, but he's observing it now with a slight disbelief and a healthy dose of regret at driving Lex to that point in the first place. The bottom of his stomach that feels like it has just plunged six stories down to hit the crumbling and fiery depths of the innermost circle of hell is gone, and with it goes his sense of balance. He wants to reach out and grab something to steady himself, but there's nothing in the immaculate office that he can touch without feeling guilty about.  
  
Their fights have grown monumental and epic in scale, and Clark can't help but think he's to blame, every time. It's not enough to carry all of Smallville on his shoulders while ensuring the town's safety, but he has to feel like the bad guy here, too. With his best friend, things are supposed to seem less complicated than they are. He knows he's only blaming himself and that Lex is only accusing him of the truth, or rather the lack of truth in their friendship, even if Lex never really accuses out loud, but with his eyes and his knowing smile. Clark knows he's at fault, that they both are, one for not telling and the other for not trusting, and it just goes around in circles while they chase their own tails.  
  
Clark hates the feeling of being trapped by his own lies. A huge compost heap of lies that has towered over them and grown heavier with each passing day, ready to fall on their heads at any given moment. Three years and they are still playing the same game.  
  
Clark swallows with some effort, his mouth gone dry. The moment when everything falls, when the lies give, may be now.  
  
"I'll put this plainly, Clark," Lex says and moves to the pool table, lining up his shot. He sinks the nine-ball into a side pocket effortlessly. "Our friendship has lost its value to me in the past year. I thought I could ignore them, but it's getting to be a little too much. Don't you think so?"  
  
"Them?" Clark avoids the question, trying to sound surprised and confused but it comes out weak and strangled. He wonders if they would've kept on lying to each other had Lex not brought on the confrontation. He doesn't have to ask himself twice to know the answer is a resounding yes.  
  
Would they have traded false smiles and hid behind their eyes ten years from now, strangers in their own skin? The thought alone is disturbing. Clark wishes futilely for days when things were simpler, even if such days never really existed. Complex seems to be the definition of his life.  
  
He wishes not for the first time that he didn't have such cumbersome gifts.  
  
When Lex finally raises his eyes from the table, they are empty where emotions used to swarm, and lackluster in the stark light of day.  
  
"I don't like lying, Clark, and you shouldn't either. It's a bad habit that will one day turn on you."  
  
"I feel like it already has." There's conviction in his voice, but it's faint. Clark thinks it's possible he just doesn't want Lex to understand and agree. Like maybe if Lex doesn't say it, then there's still hope of salvaging the pieces that are left of their friendship.  
  
Clark smiles inwardly, sober and a little bitter. A friendship built on lies is not the same as one built of trust. Most likely there will be no pieces left to save.  
  
"In that case, I think we should end this before things get more convoluted than they already are." Lex straightens and leans some of his weight on the cue stick, leveling Clark with a look that stops most journalists in their tracks.  
  
Clark is taking journalism courses and attending the occasional extra- curricular Reporters of Tomorrow seminars offered for college-bound kids, especially those that will apply for MetU. He considers the possibility of being on the receiving end of that look again in the future, and when the time comes, if Lex will really mean it. If Lex will snub him like the leeching, news-hungry journalists of today. He will be the ghost from Lex's past, Clark knows this, because even as Lex is delivering this speech, this 'we're breaking up' litany in Clark's mind, Clark knows that he won't let Lex go until either one of them is dead. Best friends are best friends forever. He promises this to himself a hundred times when he has to get through the hard days of being Lex's friend, and miraculously, he always emerges unscathed. In a way, Lex helps to shape him with every passing day that Clark spends in his company.  
  
And yet, Lex is far from perfect. Days like today where it hurts to even be around him, Clark wishes he could just crawl back under the covers and rewind the past few years of his life, or erase them completely and start afresh. Times when meteor mutants grew like the corn and Clark was blissfully ignorant to all the things that really mattered. He misses his childhood, and he misses his friend.  
  
The Lex Luthor facing him is the one he reads about in the tabloids. This is the shark come out to hunt. Perhaps he should be going before things get pushed too far. An innate sense of danger twinges acutely but sharply in his heart, speeding it up a notch. Clark forces himself to swallow before speaking, afraid that the words will stick in his throat.  
  
"I should go."  
  
"Yes," Lex says and nods almost imperceptibly. If Clark didn't know better, he would've called it reluctance.  
  
Lex gives him a look then, cautious and incriminating at the same time.  
  
Lex can make accusations by simply looking at you with his eyes. Clark resents them more than anything else because he cares about Lex more than he ever cared about his own reputation. Being Lex's friend has never been a walk in the park, but Clark has never complained. He won't start now, and he won't regret the friendship. What Lex doesn't see is that the only things Clark does regret are the lies.  
  
***  
  
In a life that was constantly changing and a world that shifted from under his feet until he found himself lost and overwhelmed, Lex was his grounding counterpart. Even though Clark fed him lies in the past, he never failed to deliver some small, trivial truth. A nice grade he received on an assignment or paper, the new pretty girl in class that expressed interest in him. A scholarship to MetU, that, even though Lex could pay for his way through college, Clark nevertheless talked enthusiastically about.  
  
"I'd be happy to set you up, Clark."  
  
Clark smiled. "With your past experience and the women you've known, I really don't think I'm in need of a homicidal girlfriend."  
  
"I meant with college," Lex said as he sat down behind his desk, the chair sighing softly underneath him.  
  
"Oh," not really surprised, Clark worried about the shifty looks he'd get if he flat out refused. "I just want to help myself through college, not accept any charities. Unless it's a scholarship, and that I would have to work for. But thanks, anyway."  
  
***  
  
Clark has never known him on Lex terms, but Clark terms. Thinking Lex is nothing like what people make him out to be, not knowing or searching for the faults of Lex's past because Clark is naïve in ways that his parents are not. There is such a thing as being willfully blind, and in Clark's case it almost works. His mind takes leaps and bounds into the future. Clark is afraid to look. He knows that by then there will be nothing left that is pure or true except the boiling, fettering seeds of contempt.  
  
Lex pulls him close, the first and last time, and loosely wraps his arms around Clark like a mother would cradle a delicate child. He pushes Clark's bangs back with his fingers before dropping his hands completely and Clark is alone again.  
  
"It was never supposed to be like this," Clark half-pleads, not really knowing what he means. Lex presses his lips to the side of Clark's head. He pulls away before warmth can even linger on the spot.  
  
"Some things we can never understand." Lex offers his last drop of wisdom. It stings like bitter bile going down Clark's throat.  
  
Clark knows that tomorrow he will open his eyes to a new day, but everything will have changed.  
  
Somehow it doesn't seem to matter as much when Lex is out of the picture. He likes to think that when Lex leaves, a part of him will leave with Lex, perhaps the most valuable piece.  
  
For all the times that Clark has dodged bullets or bent steel, been slammed into tractors and into brick walls, nothing has tarnished him yet. Below the surface, he is still untouched and unmarked, pure beyond anything else. But Lex has gotten under his impenetrable skin. He has been living inside Clark since the first day by the river, intricately bound with Clark's soul because Clark had saved his.  
  
Clark can feel his feet wanting to shuffle towards him when Lex moves to leave the room, and the strings that are wrapped around Clark's heart squeeze and pinch like barbed wire being pulled taut. Although he wants to move, to follow, he wills his legs to stop swaying and curls his toes inside his shoes, making it impossible for him to walk even if he tried.  
  
Lex turns back once and smiles. Even if it is empty, Clark absorbs it like the sunshine. One small piece to the greater puzzle, a token for a friendship that is crumbling to ash. Clark builds up his resolve, feeling the muscles of his face pull tight and stony.  
  
He faces Lex with the steely eyes of Jonathan Kent, with the tight press of Martha's lips - with a heart of his own that will not break. 


End file.
